Trump denied in a social media post that the US knew about Israel’s attack against Iran’s South Pars gas field, which provoked retaliatory strikes against Gulf energy infrastructure that worsened the global energy crisis, and claimed that he told Israel not to repeat such strikes. Netanyahu soon thereafter said that Israel did indeed act alone and agreed to adhere to Trump’s request. The New York Times, however, cited unnamed Israel officials who claimed that the South Pars attack was coordinated with the US.
While it’s impossible to independently verify their report, it’s possible that Trump might have approved the attack, even if only tacitly by declining to tell Netanyahu to back off upon learning about it. The rationale for at the very least allowing to happen could have been to stop the so-called “petroyuan” dead in its tracks after Iran began flirting with the possibility of only allowing safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz for tankers that prove that they paid for their oil and gas in China’s currency.
Iran’s interests in this policy would be to deal a powerful blow to the “petrodollar”, which is one of the pillars of the US’ global strength, while the US’ interests in allowing Israel to strike the South Pars gas field would have been to punish Iran for even considering such a move. Cynics might also suspect that the US could have wanted Iran to retaliate against Gulf energy infrastructure exactly as it earlier threatened to do if its own such infrastructure was attacked to further reduce possible supplies to China.
The consequence of such a speculative calculation was the further worsening of the global energy crisis, but that might have been a cost that Trump was willing to pay, albeit in a “controlled manner” upon then telling Israel not to do it again as well as threatening to blow up South Pars if Iran attacks Qatar again. On that note, Iran’s retaliation knocked out 17% of Qatar’s LNG capacity for the next 3-5 years according to the CEO of its state-owned energy company, which is also the largest LNG producer in the world.
The sudden removal of such a large amount of natural gas from the global market works to the US and Russia’s advantage, which are two of largest producers alongside Qatar (and Australia), thus reinforcing the petrodollar’s status and possibly creating the opportunity for a “petroruble” to take shape too. After all, it would make perfect sense for Russia to demand payment in rubles for the oil and gas that it sells to its unprecedentedly desperate clients, and it could even team up with the US to monopolize the market.
This scenario could unfold in the event that Russia and the US clinch the resource-centric strategic partnership that Putin’s aide Kirill Dmitriev has been negotiating with Trump’s aides Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Putin might also first require the US (and newly desperate Europe) to coerce Zelensky into giving him most, if not all, of what he demands in Ukraine. Even if they don’t and the Ukrainian Conflict continues, however, he might still be pragmatic enough to consider this possibility without that.
Circling back to the introduction, even if Trump really didn’t know about Israel’s South Pars attack in advance, it still made the petroyuan less likely than ever before by provoking Iran into taking more of the Gulf Kingdom’s energy exports offline through its predictable retaliation. Iran’s flirtation with the petroyuan during the ongoing conflict was reckless in any case since there was never any chance that the US would let this happen and not do whatever it could to prevent it from dethroning the petrodollar.
